Balancing out Work and Life through Spirituality

By AiR Atman in Ravi, Spiritual Leader and Founder of AiR Institute of Realization and AiR center of Enlightenment.

Many people who seek Spirituality, wonder if there is a way to balance work and life by practising Spirituality? Whether Spirituality will help them strike a balance between stressful life at work and constant anxiety in personal life full of commitments? Will they ever be able to lead a fulfilling, anxiety-free life? The answer is, ‘Yes!’ But is Spiritual life all about it? No! It is about going on a quest to Realize the Truth.

Spirituality is the science of the Spirit, the Soul, the Atman. It is the study of the Power that gives us life and helps us rediscover our inner peace and well-being by taking us away from the rat race of this material world. It helps us gain SatChitAnanada – Consciousness of the Truth that is Bliss. What is the Truth? That this life is nothing but a Divine Drama. That the world is nothing but a Cosmic Illusion. That we all are but a manifestation of the Divine. We all are SIP, the Supreme Immortal Power manifesting as us. Then we don’t get stressed. We discover inner peace and not only do we regain equal focus on work and life but we also get completely purified from within. We don’t harm anyone with our talks and actions and negativity no longer affects us.

First, we must understand why we have lost our inner peace. It is our own mind that steals our happiness. The mind is nothing but a bundle of thoughts. It jumps from thought to thought and makes us worry about our work life and also creates thoughts of anxiety and guilt that we are not available for enough time to our family members. It makes us live with toxic emotions. This overthinking results in procrastination at work which leads to a lack of quality time for family and friends. What must we do so that it stops its monkey business? We have to kill the mind! We have to still the mind! We must bring down the number of thoughts it produces by bringing down the MTR, the Mental Thought Rate, from 50 thoughts a minute to just 1 thought a minute. If we look at the word MONKEY, it has a tail, the EY. We have to cut the EY. The EY is Ever-Yelling and Ever-Yearning. When we tame the ‘monkey mind’, when we cut its tail, it becomes a MONK. Then, we experience inner peace. All this is possible because of Spirituality. It is in this state of Consciousness that when the mind ceases to exist, we are peaceful.

Realization of the truth can open the doors to a state of complete well-being. We suffer because we live in the darkness of ignorance. We are constantly chasing wealth, success and achievements. We let greed overtake our need. Why? We think that all this will make us happy. On the contrary, is it worth it? No. We become anxious and miserable. Spirituality helps us realize that nothing belongs to us. We come empty-handed and we go empty-handed. When we open our real eyes and realize the truth, we love our family members too with detached attachment. We fulfill our duties towards them but we don’t get attached to them. The sooner we realize this, the better it is. Furthermore, we realize that everything that unfolds in life is because of Karma. As we sow, so shall we reap. If anything untoward happens in life, instead of becoming miserable, we must rejoice because our negative Karma is being negated.

Spirituality is a Divine way to overcome all suffering. It is a way to eternal bliss, peace and joy. Anybody can choose to live a Spiritual life and one does not have to give up this world to be Spiritual. Then, although we may appear as bone and skin, we will live as the Power within.